College of Wooster’s Eighth Lindner Lecture in Ethics to Feature Tommie Shelby

College of Wooster’s Eighth Lindner Lecture in Ethics to Feature Tommie Shelby

WOOSTER, Ohio – Tommie Shelby, professor of African and African American studies and
philosophy at Harvard, will present “Justice, Segregation and the Ghetto Poor" at
the Eighth Lindner Lecture in Ethics on Wednesday, Oct. 23, at The College of Wooster.
The free public lecture will begin at 7:30 p.m. in Gault Recital Hall of Scheide Music
Center (525 E. University St.).

The following day (Oct. 24) Shelby will participate in a session, titled "Author Meets
Critics" with Jorge Garcia, professor of philosophy at Boston College, and Naomi Zack,
professor of philosophy at the University of Oregon, serving as "critics." The session
will take place in Lean Lecture Room of Wishart Hall (303 E. University St.) beginning
at 11 a.m.

Shelby received his B.A. in philosophy from Florida A&M University and his Ph.D.
in philosophy from the University of Pittsburgh. His areas of interest include African
American philosophy, philosophical perspectives on race and racism, social and political
philosophy, liberalism, black nationalism, and Marxist and neo-Marxist social theory.
He is the author of We Who Are Dark: Philosophical Foundations of Black Solidarity (2005) and editor (with Derrick Darby) of Hip Hop and Philosophy: Rhyme 2 Reason (2005). Shelby is currently working on a book manuscript tentatively titled, Justice and the Dark Ghetto: The Moral Limits of Liberal Pragmatism.

Garcia received his Ph.D. from Yale University. His research has focused on normative
moral theory, including the concepts of goodness and virtue, and on articulating and
defending a "virtues-based, role-centered, and patient-focused" moral theory, while
critiquing consequentialist and other alternatives. In the last decade, he has written
an influential series of articles philosophically developing what he calls a "volitional"
conception of racism, and he is currently arguing for a deflationary approach to race
and ethnicity, and for narrow limits to what can be socially constructed. Garcia is
currently working on a book, titled The Heart of Racism: Essays on Diversity, Race, and Relativism.

Zack received her Ph.D. from Columbia University. She is a prominent figure in philosophy
of race (issues of ethics science, and identity), feminist theory and politics, disaster
ethics, and history of philosophy. She has spearheaded the philosophical investigation
into mixed-race identities and disaster ethics. Zack is the author of Race and Mixed Race (1993), Philosophy of Science and Race (2002), Inclusive Feminism (2005), and Ethics for Disaster (2009). Her most recent book, The Ethics and Mores of Race: Equality After the History of Philosophy (2011), is an inquiry into the history of moral philosophy for principles of egalitarian
humanism.

The Lindner Lecture in Ethics is supported by the The Lindner Endowment, which was
established in 2007 through a generous gift from Carl H. Lindner to support the department
of philosophy in the teaching of ethics. Additional information about the lecture
is available by phone (330-263-2380) or e-mail.